by Matt Dathan, The Times
Segregation units meant for dangerous terrorists are instead used to protect inmates who refuse to join their gangs at HMP Frankland, The Times has been told
Prisoners who refuse to join radical Islamist gangs are having to be placed in segregation units for their own safety, The Times can reveal.
Officers at HMP Frankland in Co Durham, one of the highest-security jails in Britain, are keeping vulnerable prisoners apart from Islamic extremists in an effort to maintain order and discipline.
The jail has become so overrun with Islamic gangs that its “terrorist separation centres”, built to stop terrorists from radicalising other prisoners, have become obsolete.
Instead, other prisoners are forced into the isolation units to protect them because they are at risk of being attacked and face death threats if they refuse to join the gangs.
The prison has been accused of appeasing fundamentalists amid a power struggle between radical Islamists and other inmates that is mirrored in many British jails.
Ian Acheson, a former prison governor who also served in the Home Office as the director of community safety, warned that a failure to tackle this issue represented a “national security threat” and could lead to race riots in prisons.